The Experiment from Hell
by Bazzano03
Summary: When Dr. David Marrow decided to run his experiment, he didn't count on the location being haunted or that he and his fellow guests were going to be scared out of their minds as two of them lost their lives. This is The Haunting through the eyes of Dr. Marrow and it will be a wild ride.


**The Experiment from Hell**

**Characters: Dr. David Marrow, Eleanor Vance, Theo, Luke Sanderson **

**Time-line: The Haunting when Marrow decides to runs his test and is in his office with his assistant discussing his plans for the experiment and his time in the house before they separated.**

**Disclaimers: I do not own The Haunting or the characters they belong to Shirley Jackson and the DreamWorks company. The story is mine everything else belongs to the author and the director of The Haunting.**

**Warnings: Everything from the 1999 version of the movie will be in this and it will be in the first person point of view of David Marrow. Due to the tone of the actors of the movie I will have this following the dialogue of the characters and there will be violence and profanity, so the rating will be for teenagers 14 and up and adults.**

**Chapter 1: Prologue and Lab Rats**

The memory of what had happened when I ran my experiment still haunts me to this day. The idea was so I could study fear with the three people I had chosen and keep it quiet, but my plans for this were shot down when one of my charges was being terrorized by the soul of the tyrant that had lived in that house and both she and another were killed when the house started going crazy. I wish that I could take it back, but I can't and I am writing this as a tribute to the people that lost their lives because of a crazed maniac and hope that with this they can rest in peace.

For those who really want to know what happened in that house I will take you into my memories and you can see through my eyes what happened in that week and what made me make this book. What you will see and hear through my eyes and ears will frighten you, but I want the truth to come out, so hang on, here we go...

This begins when I was in my office reading through one of the files that I had gotten from my assistant Mary Lambretta, the file she had given me was that of one of the people who volunteered for this and her name was Eleanor Vance as I stared at her photo, I thought she was beautiful, but I was trying to stay detached, since I knew, as a psychologist, that you can't get close to your patients and was listening with partial attention to Mary as she told me how these types of experiments worked. "This how their organized, the groups are made up of five people with different personalities scored over the Kiersey temperament disorder just like you asked for and they all score very high on the insomnia charts." she said as I looked over Eleanors' file and was thinking out loud.

"Ooh what a beautiful profile, classic dependent personality disorder, however we are looking for suggestible." I said to her and she looked serious as she told me. "Her mother died two months, she really wants to do this." and I nodded, but I wanted her opinion before I added Ms. Vance to my list of candidates. "What are your feelings Mary, tell me what your intuitions say." I said with a smile and she had a faint one her face as well. "I put my favorites on top." she told me and I nodded as I looked through the other files and she pulled a photo of the house out of a yellow envelope and looked at it and I read through what the file said about her "Low self-esteem, high narcissism, chronic feeling of emptiness, identity disturbance, good, good, very good" I was saying to myself as I looked up at her as she looked at the picture. "Is this where we're going?" she asked and I nodded. "Yes, that's Hill House, it's perfect isn't it." I said with a smile.

It was a few hours later when I was arguing with my boss Malcolm Keogh and he was debating about whether this was a good idea or not. "The Hill House project" he started to say and I interrupted as I said. "It's absolutely essential to my research Malcolm." I said and he stopped me. "Just listen, I grant you that fear and performance is a big, sexy idea, but as chairman for this department I can't abide by it." he said and I once again tried to explain to him.

"Malcolm, I know that you clinical guys don't like to ask these questions, but think what is fear anyway: it is a series of automatic responses to given stimulus characterized by increased heart-rate, respiratory activity and adrenaline function, the only problem with fear is that these have become largely inappropriate and non-adaptive: do sweaty palms help you to talk to you boss, does a racing pulse help some kid score on an SAT and yet we carry these primordial responses that do the opposite of what their intended to do, so why it that." I said to him and he tried to placate me.

"David, David, no one said that these aren't provocative questions, but you can't run this experiment ethically or responsibly and on top of that, you are bringing your insomniacs to that house on false pretense." he said and I quickly explained the reason. "Because the experiment needs an credible cover story, calling it an insomnia study allows me to create a highly suggestive inviroment to explore the dynamics of fear, you don't tell the rats that their actually in a maze Malcolm, come on." I said and he turned back to his office as I followed him.

"Alright, but if there is trouble I want you to pull the plug no arguments and tell them the truth." he said and I nodded as I went back to my office and prepared for the trip. Looking back on this now, I should have just listened to him, but at the time I was too excited that I finally had the chance to put my studies to the test and find out what I could learn from it. Now most people when they see a haunted house are skeptical, but I didn't believe in that stuff and looked at it logically, but this was going to change my life and I was never going to be skeptical again after this.

Mary had found another person to join the group and I chose three others as well. The four that we had chosen were Eleanore, a young artist named Theo, and a college back-packer who was studying insomnia and doing these tests for money named Luke Sanderson, Mary's choice was Todd Hackett. As we organized things I started sending letters with the instructions to each of the members of the group and called the Care-takers of the house who were a couple in their fifties and they were pretty rude as well, but they accepted that we would only be there for a week and made preparations as we each packed a weeks worth of clothes and made the trip to the house, not knowing there was going to be trouble and I was going to get the crap scared out me and watch as two innocent lives, who in that week became my friends, were going to meet tragic ends and I would have to live with it and the guilt for the rest of my life.

**Well that is chapter 1: for anyone who has seen the movie I think you can see where this going, but like any good writer will tell you, read between the lines and you will enjoy the story more.**


End file.
